After the jump, we have the trailer for Interior. Leather. Bar., James Franco’s collaboration with Travis Matthews playing Sundance next month. As always with Professor Franco, it’s hard confine the piece to a single artistic medium. But hey, don’t try to wrap your mind around it, just lay back and enjoy the dicknosing. News of the collaboration first came out in July – basically, this guy Travis Matthews made an indie called I Want Your Love, which featured unsimulated sex (still the “ultimate taboo” even though it seems like it’s been broken by every art student since the sixties), and James Franco called him up and asked if he wanted to collaborate on a “homo-sex-art film.” This is that homo sex art film.

It has long been rumored that William Friedkin cut forty minutes of explicit material out of his 1980 Al Pacino starring thriller Cruising for ratings purposes and it is those forty minutes that are of interest to Franco and his co-director Travis Mathews. [Twitch]

Basically, Franco and Matthews are trying to recreate those 40 minutes. Only because it’s James Franco, it won’t be a straight recreation of those 40 minutes, more a psuedo-documentary about the act of James Franco trying to recreate those 40 minutes, and a meditation on artists trying to recreate art and whether that is itself art… And at the end? You guessed it, EVERYONE GETS DICKNOSED.

I almost typed “Franco’s gay sex movie” in the headline, until I realized that wasn’t nearly specific enough. He’s already played gay men in Howl and Milk, shot a short film about a gay guy fantasizing about naked dudes playing basketball, watched a male prostitute have sex to prepare for a role in Sonny, had a solo art show about sexual confusion that featured Spock and Kirk doing gay stuff, allegedly tricked a guy into simulated anal as a practical joke (hilarious if true, by the way)… I’m sure there’s more, but James Franco is hard to keep up with. He sort of claims not to differentiate between gay and straight subject matter as if he’s this enlightened, sexuality colorblind dude, but the very fact that he’s so obsessed with gay art sort of betrays an inner view of it as something weird and lurid and taboo. …Is someone writing this down? I think this could be thesis material. (*tucks dick and balls between legs*) Would you guys f*ck me? I’d f*ck me.

Whatever gives more attention to ‘Cruising’ is fine with me. It was Friedkin’s last great film before he went into the wilderness that ended with ‘To Live and Die in LA.’ Of course, then he went BACK into the wilderness for quite a few years after that too. But I digress.

‘Cruising’ is Friedkin on all cylinders. Gritty, edgy, creepy and unapologetically in-your-face all the way. Just beautiful filmmaking, crammed with subliminal imagery and eerie sound design (the killers voice migrating from person to person). I’m glad Billy has another bullseye with ‘Killer Joe.’

And I’m glad Franco is doing batshit crazy stuff. He does come off like a tool sometimes, but at least he seems to be swinging for the fences, unlike most of his pretty-boy peers.

I really do not understand this site’s obsession with this clown. I get that he is completely self un-aware, but on top of being clueless, he’s just kind of boring. He’s three awful Spider-Man movies removed from being a typical Williamsburg-dwelling Starbucks barista.